Jack Dorsey | Be a Seed for Change

Over the course of only eight days, white-supremacist violence killed dozens of people in tragic mass shootings in communities including Gilroy, California, and El Paso, Texas. Of course, these aren’t the first communities to have mass murder visited upon their doorsteps by white supremacists — nor will they be the last.

As Black and Brown people, we are not safe in the United States. Our communities are under attack. In Gilroy, the shooter even stooped so low as to murder a six-year-old Brown boy. We don’t want to live like this. And we’re not going to take it lying down!

As we approach the two-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, it’s important to take stock of what online platforms have done — or haven’t done — to stop the spread of white supremacy.

While the rally and murder of peaceful protester Heather Heyer served as a wake-up call for many tech companies, Twitter has done very little to stop white supremacists from organizing, fundraising, recruiting and normalizing attacks on women and people of color on its platform. In fact, Twitter continues to provide a megaphone to white supremacists who planned or participated in Charlottesville’s deadly white-supremacist riot.

Words have consequences. White supremacists, with Trump at the helm, have consistently dehumanized our communities, calling us “invaders,” an “invasion” and an “infestation” on social media — words we saw parroted in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto.

Twitter has allowed white supremacists to run rampant on its platform, and enabled them to organize real-world events centered on their hateful ideology and publicize their acts of violence. The company’s failure to stand strong against white supremacists is putting people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQIA+ people and women — common targets of organized online hate — in danger.

No one has a right to be amplified by online platforms. It’s long past time for Twitter to step up.

Stand on the right side of history: Tell Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to #StopRacistTwitter by banning white supremacists and adopting the Change the Terms coalition’s model policies and terms of service.

reference:

1. “Two Years Ago, They Marched in Charlottesville. Where Are They Now?” ADL, August 8, 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/165078?t=12&akid=35176%2E1174326%2E2gJhaN
2. “Twitter Under Fire Again for Failing to Ban White Supremacists as Charlottesville Anniversary Nears,” Gizmodo, August 2, 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/165079?t=14&akid=35176%2E1174326%2E2gJhaN
3. “Twitter Says Trump’s Tweet Didn’t Violate Its Rules Against Racism but Won’t Say Why,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/165080?t=16&akid=35176%2E1174326%2E2gJhaN
4. “Twitter Says Trump’s Tweet Didn’t Violate Its Rules Against Racism but Won’t Say Why,” The Washington Post, July 15, 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/165080?t=18&akid=35176%2E1174326%2E2gJhaN
5. “Twitter Under Fire Again for Failing to Ban White Supremacists as Charlottesville Anniversary Nears,” Gizmodo, August 2, 2019, https://act.colorofchange.org/go/165079?t=20&akid=35176%2E1174326%2E2gJhaN

30 Terrific Twitter Facts And Figures

Twitter has always suffered an image problem and is not usually taken very seriously by the general public. Its name doesn’t help with some people even saying that ‘Twitter is for twits’. Despite this glamor and brand problem this has not held back its growth after its humble origins and launch in 2006.

Since then Twitter has gained popularity worldwide and is estimated to have 225 million users, generating 65 million tweets a day and handling over 800,000 search queries per day. It is sometimes described as the “SMS of the Internet” and its 140 character limit keeps the messages short and simple.

Its attraction as a social web media platform is maybe in its simplicity and real time messaging that enables breaking news and information to hit the web instantly without filters and censorship.

30 Terrific Twitter Facts and Figures

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July of that year.

Twitter’s origins lie in a “day long brainstorming session” that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. While sitting in a park on a children’s slide and eating Mexican food, Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group.

The first Twitter prototype was used as an internal service for Odeo employees and the full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006

The original project code name for the service was ‘twttr‘, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by the name of the social media image website ‘Flickr’ and the five-character length of American SMS short codes.

The team finally settled on the name ‘twitter‘, which means ‘chirps from birds’ in essence ‘a short burst of inconsequential information’

The tipping point for Twitter’s popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000.

It had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter in 2007

In 2008 there were only 3 million registered users

In 2008 there were only 1.25 million tweets per day

Jan 2008 there were only 8 employees

In 2009 or 2 years ago Twitter had 8 million registered users

In 2011 there are now over 400 employees

75% of Twitter traffic comes from third-party applications

60% of all tweets come from third-party apps

There are over 100,000 Twitter applications

A Forrester report revealed that “Twitterers are the connected of the connected, overindexing at all Social Media habits. For example, Twitterers are three times more likely to be Creators (people who create and share content via blog posts and YouTube) as the general US population” (source Forrester report “Who Flocks to Twitter”)

3 years, 2 months and 1 day…the time it took from the first tweet to the billionth tweet.

It now takes one week for users to send a billion Tweets.

In March 2010 the average number of tweets people sent per week was the the 350 million.

140 million is the average number of tweets people sent per day in February 2011

177 million tweets sent on March 11, 2011.

When Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 there were 456 tweets per second (TPS)…a record at that time.

The current TPS record is 6,939 tweets per second set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day

572,000 is the number of new accounts created in one day (March 12, 2011)

460,000 is the average number of new accounts per day created in February, 2011

182% is the increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

In March 2011 there are an estimated 225 million users

25 billion tweets sent on Twitter in 2010